The February edition of the ICBW podcast is now available for download or streaming.  Part 1 deals with the (short-lived) trade war initiated by the Trump administration against Canada and Mexico; part 2 covers various Trump administration appointees and their confirmation hearings; part 3 looks at the ceasefire and hostage/prisoner exchanges between Israel and Hamas; and part 4 discusses the LA wildfires, their press coverage, and more general lessons about the press.  As always, listeners are invited to participate in the discussion via comments on this post.

 The jam-packed, multi-topic January edition of the ICBW podcast is now available for download or streaming.  Part 1 reviews the predictions for 2024, before covering two issues that have received considerable attention on social media: "grooming gangs" in Britain and drone sightings in the US.  Part 2 touches on the fall of the Syrian government and the H1-B visa issue; part 3 considers the possibility that the federal bureaucracy and the criminal justice system in the US have "gone rogue"; and finally, part 4 uses the topic of "climate change" as a jumping-off point for a debate on how, if at all, academic research can be freed from politicized, dissent-stifling top-down control.  As always, listeners are invited to participate in the discussion via comments on this post.